[46] Life of Newton, vol. i. p. 292.
Newton appears to have discovered the method of demonstrating that a body might describe an ellipse when acted upon by a force residing in the focus, and varying inversely as the square of the distance, in 1669, upon occasion of his correspondence with Hooke. In 1684, [548] at Halley’s request, he returned to the subject; and in February, 1685 there was inserted in the Register of the Royal Society a paper of Newton’s (Isaaci Newtoni Propositiones de Motu), which contained some of the principal propositions of the first two Books of the Principia. This paper, however, does not contain the proposition “Lunam gravitare in Terram,” nor any of the propositions of the Third Book.
CHAPTER III.
The Principia.
Sect. 2.—Reception of the Principia.
LORD BROUGHAM has very recently (Analytical View of Sir Isaac Newton’s Principia, 1855) shown a strong disposition still to maintain, what he says has frequently been alleged, that the reception of the work was not, even in this country, “such as might have been expected.” He says, in explanation of the facts which I have adduced, showing the high estimation in which Newton was held immediately after the publication of the Principia, that Newton’s previous fame was great by former discoveries. This is true; but the effect of this was precisely what was most honorable to Newton’s countrymen, that they received with immediate acclamations this new and greater discovery. Lord Brougham adds, “after its appearance the Principia was more admired than studied;” which is probably true of the Principia still, and of all great works of like novelty and difficulty at all times. But, says Lord Brougham, “there is no getting over the inference on this head which arises from the dates of the two first editions. There elapsed an interval of no less than twenty-seven years between them; and although Cotes [in his Preface] speaks of the copies having become scarce and in very great demand when the second edition appeared in 1713, yet had this urgent demand been of many years’ continuance, the reprinting could never have been so long delayed.” But Lord Brougham might have learnt from Sir David Brewster’s Life of Newton (vol. i. p. 312), which he extols so emphatically, that already in 1691 (only four years after the publication), a copy of the Principia could hardly be procured, and that even at that [549] time an improved edition was in contemplation; that Newton had been pressed by his friends to undertake it, and had refused.
When Bentley had induced Newton to consent that a new edition should be printed, he announces his success with obvious exultation to Cotes, who was to superintend the work. And in the mean time the Astronomy of David Gregory, published in 1702, showed in every page how familiar the Newtonian doctrines were to English philosophers, and tended to make them more so, as the sermons of Bentley himself had done in 1692.
Newton’s Cambridge contemporaries were among those who took a part in bringing the Principia before the world. The manuscript draft of it was conveyed to the Royal Society (April 28, 1686) by Dr. Vincent, Fellow of Clare Hall, who was the tutor of Whiston, Newton’s deputy in his professorship; and he, in presenting the work, spoke of the novelty and dignity of the subject. There exists in the library of the University of Cambridge a manuscript containing the early Propositions of the Principia as far as Prop. xxxiii. (which is a part of Section vii., about Falling Bodies). This appears to have been a transcript of Newton’s Lectures, delivered as Lucasian Professor: it is dated October, 1684.